Extending our classroom to the world!

Hunger Warriors for FMSC – Team 4

Our team chose to support Feed My Starving Children Charity. This charity’s main purpose is to deliver nutritious meals to starving children around the world. We hosted a series of micro events leading up to and culminating into one larger service. Micro took place throughout the month of July and the service event took place early August.

First micro event consisted of participating in the Rock ‘n’ Roll 5k race (July 18th). The goal of this event was to boost awareness of the charity, show our commitment to the cause, and potentially inspire donations.

Second micro event was a bowling afternoon (July 26th) where profits where proceeds from the night were donated to the charity. This event also served as means to promote charity and event awareness.

Third micro event consisted of a “Dine and Share” night (July 30th) at a local Chick-Fil-A near the location of the service event. A percentage, 15%, of revenues for a designated time period was donated to FMSC on our behalf. This also served as an opportunity to promote our service event and the charity.

Our service event (August 1st) aimed to bring a group of people together to pack food into boxes at a local facility for Feed My Starving Children.

Objective and Success Measures

Our team collectively identified 3 objectives to focus on from start to finish:

Raise awareness of FMSC (measurable)

Raise donations for FMSC (measurable)

Ensure the project is enjoyable and fun (subjective)

To meet the awareness objective and drive donations we created a Facebook page as well as a Twitter page. We were able to promote our events, share updates, and receive comments from our followers. In addition we utilized free of charge online marketing services such as Metromix, Fun in the Burbs, Evently, and Timeout. We also distributed and displayed event flyers in Public libraries and other local businesses.

The following are the results of our success measures we have identified to ensure that our objectives are accomplished:

Donations: $4,544.20

Number of unique donors: 33

Number of people at bowling event: 57

Number of people at packing event: 50

Total number of like or followers on Facebook and Twitter: 211

Advice

We have learned from our experience. We strongly recommend the following:

Assign a Project Manager at the beginning of the project

Establish a regular schedule and stick with it

Decide on a method of communication to minimize confusion

Lessons Learned

We have learned from our successes as well as some of the difficulties we experienced throughout the project’s durations. Here are 3 we have all identified to be most important.

Having a designated, responsible, and dependable Project Manager on the team from beginning to end is crucial. We have identified a member of the team to take the lead at the beginning and it helped tremendously.

Using web based communication tools was very helpful and it encouraged every member to stay on task and current with responsibilities. It also created transparency, allowing each member to see the status of the project. Some tools used included Trello, Slack, and Google Drive.

Not having all of the event attendees’ names created confusion. Using Eventbrite to track the number of reservations was very convenient. However, one person was able to reserve more than one spot with one name.

4 thoughts on “Hunger Warriors for FMSC – Team 4”

It looked like you guys did a great job and did a lot in a little time. Having someone taking the lead for the group as a project manager would probably be very helpful, however working with peers might be somewhat of a struggle. How did you decide on who to assign and what activates was the project manager assigned to?

There are so many great charities and Feed My Starving Children is one of the best charities I’ve ever volunteered for. Your team raised a lot of money, and even though the project is not about raising the most money, your team was able to feed a lot of hungry little ones. I absolutely love your post. How great to be able to utilize social networks, like Facebook, to raise awareness and money.
I appreciate you sharing the idea of having a Project Manager. After my team was formed we immediately assigned a Poject Manager and it has been working out great!!!

Sounds like your team had fun while raising money for such a great cause. I appreciate you sharing your “Advice” and “Lessons Learned” on assigning a project manager, selecting a method of communication, and using web based communication tools. I agree with the importance of having a project manager that can guide the team from start to finish. We selected a project manager on our first day of class (I was nominated). In regards to method of communication, we are using email and text messages to communicate. We have already had a phone conference and will have a few in-person meetings in the next few weeks. I haven’t used the tools your team used to track project status (Trello or Slack). All of our project documents are being stored on Google Drive (suggested by another team member) so everyone has access to the latest and nothing slips thru the cracks. So far this is working out. I will look into the other tools your team used to see if this is something that will work for us. My only concern with new tools is that we may focus our attention on learning how to use the tool, versus working on the deliverables for the project. Currently we are using a spreadsheet to track progress, but I am open to suggestions that will make us work effectively. Did everyone on your team use the tools you listed? Was one tool better than the other?

Feed My Starving Children is a wonderful charity and I’ve volunteered there before. My group has choses FMSC as the charity to support. I’m excited that the group has chosen FMSC because I’ve been thinking about organizing something similar with friends and family and this gives me an opportunity to not only support a wonderful organization but also gain valuable project experience. Thank you for your advice and sharing your lessons learned. I’m certain that these lessons will become useful during our project.